The Cerulean Warbler

Ah, Dendroica Cerulean—elusive tree-top dweller. You’re fond of nesting and foraging higher than your brethren, aren’t you lil’ fella?

With your dual white wing bars, and matching stripes down the sides of a milky chest.

You are just four inches (snicker). Alright, alright, eight inches when fully erect.

Your sound—a Bitches Brew Miles Davis, climaxing with that devil-may-care trill, “zee zee zee zizizizi eeet.”

Then comes the news that you are not only endangered, but that the cold stupid machinations of Fish and Wildlife Department have left you in the cold.

The migratory songbird used to be widespread in Appalachia, but its numbers have dropped by about 80 percent during the past 40 years, birders estimate. They attribute much of the loss to logging practices and mountaintop strip-mining. The warbler now nests primarily in the hills of southern Ohio and adjoining West Virginia.

Listing the bird probably would meet opposition, Rodewald said. “It could affect the management of all the oak-hickory habitat in the east—habitat with a lot of socioeconomic interests.”

Sorry old man. Sorry.